Subscribe to this blog

Subscribe to Who She Reads

Writer Spotlight: DL White

This up and coming author is a voracious reader and believes in the connection between reading widely and writing well. She loves skittles, documentaries, shiny things and rich characters that feel like her best friends along with vivid story lines that play out like a movie in my head. A lover of words…if not reading them, writing them. By day she is an EA for a Telecom company and writes by night. Stop by her site, she has hidden writing you will only see if you visit her site.

In the Author's Words - I write contemporary African American & interracial romance, women's fiction and erotic romance. My inspiration is,
truly, all the great authors out there creating worlds I want to live in.
If I can see your book play out like a movie in my head, I am in HEAVEN.
The desire to be a part of that life and create that experience for other
readers is what drives me.

Tell us more- Ruby's Soul Food Cafe, a neighborhood diner, has
been a hot spot their whole lives, so it's only fitting that Ruby's is where
Debra, Maxi and Renee meet monthly to do what girlfriends do-- eat, drink
and offer unsolicited advice on life and love.

Brunch at Ruby's is a heartfelt and inspiring story about lifelong friends,
the bond that holds them together and the test to see how far that bond
will bend before it breaks.

With permission I have been allowed to share her copyrighted work with you on my site. Please contact the author through her website before using any of the work seen here.

Sounds interesting, Can you share a little with us?

I wrap a bath sheet around my body, tucking the end in
between my breasts and open the door to the bedroom. To my surprise,
Willard is lying on the bed, fully clothed except for his shoes. One ankle
is crossed over the other. At my appearance from the bathroom, he presses
a button to mute the canned laughter of a sitcom on the TV mounted above
the bureau.

"You save me any hot water?"

I'm so surprised that he's speaking to me that I stand there, mute for a
few moments. When he tilts his head toward me, I snap from my reverie.

"Uh, sure. There should be enough water for a shower."

He sits up, then drops his feet from the bed to the floor and stalks toward
the bathroom. "Great. I'll hop in then before I head to the other room." My
heart sinks. He still plans to sleep in the guest room.

Feeling defeated, I slowly go through the motions of getting ready for bed:
I put on a nightgown, one in emerald green, Willard's favorite color.
There are sexy, wispy spaghetti straps, well formed cups for my breasts and
it hits me about mid-thigh. Just in case he decides to sleep in our bed, I
don't want to be wearing something my grandmother would wear. I consider
tying my hair back in a scarf but opt not to.Instead, I rub a towel through
my hair and slip into bed. I leave a single lamp lit and I wait for Willard.

I hear the water turn off, the door to the glassed-in shower click shut.
The linen closet door open, then shut. Sounds of a soft cotton towel
rubbing against skin. The door opens, spilling steam and the manly scent of
Willard's body wash into the room.

His nightly routine is painful to watch while I'm waiting to see if he's
going to keep treating me like I'm not here. With a towel wrapped around
his torso, Willard moves through the room toward the bureau, slides open a
drawer, picks out a pair of white briefs and slips them on, tossing the
towel away, into the pile of laundry in the closet. He slaps some lotion
onto his arms, legs and chest. Brushes his hair, applies deodorant to his
underarms. All without a word.

Finally he turns to face me. I'm in the bed, on the left side--my side- the
sheets and comforter gathered around my waist so he can see the nightgown I
chose to wear, because it's his favorite.

He smiles, but the smile is... off. "You wear that for him, too?"

"What?" I mean, I heard him, but... he didn't just ask me that, did he?

"You heard me. Did you wear that for him too? Does he like that nightgown?
Does he like you in green, Debra? What's his favorite color, huh?"

He turns, opens a drawer and rifles through my stash of silky, slinky
fabrics. He pulls out a black lace number that I only wore once because it
made me itch. I remember Willard laughed when he took it off me and I was
so grateful, not because he was being romantic but because I was about to
go crazy from the itching.

"Did he like this one? Did you wear this one for him?"

"Willard..." I'm trying to remain calm but he's not making this easy. "Don't
do this, please."

"Don't do what? Don't ask my wife if the other man she's fucking likes her
in the lingerie that I bought her, that she wore for me? How thrifty of
you, to wear them for him, too. You know what we call that in accounting?
Cost of Use. When you buy something that's expensive, but you get so much
use out of it that it's actually cost effective. So this..." He tosses the
gown to the floor. "Has a low cost of use."

"Willard, honey, I think we should talk--"

"About what?" He laughs, but his laughter isn't happy. "About what, Debra?
About how you looked me in my face every damn day while you were fucking
that other man--"

"Lower your voice, please."

"Lower my voice, she says. Lower my--don't tell me to lower my voice. Are
you afraid your twelve year old might hear about how Mrs. Macklin is doing
one of the teachers?"

"Willard--"

"Just tell me how, Debra. Just tell me how you come home to me, to our
daughter every day after being with him? Tell me, because it seems to me
that cheating is a choice you make. And you were doing this for almost a
year? That's a lot of choices. Over and over and over again, you chose him
over me. Over Kendra. Over us."

He shakes his head, stomps toward the bed and snatches his pillow from his
side. He grumbles, more to himself, but I'm meant to hear it.

"I don't have anything to say to you. And you don't have a damn thing to
say to me."

The door slams in his wake.

I sit, still on what has been my side of the bed for over fifteen years,
staring at the closed door. The unshed tears blur my vision.

What's on the Horizon? - I have an Interracial Erotic Romance coming out
this summer called Same Time Next Week. I have a contemporary African
American romance called The Never List in the writing process right now,
hopefully will be out this year.

And I am planning the followup to Brunch at Ruby's entitled Dinner at Sam's, which SHOULD hit the shelves in 2016 if I can get my act together.

Where can readers purchase your books or content? - My books are most
easily purchased at Amazon.com. Paperback copies of Brunch at Ruby's are
available at Lulu.com.

Any tips for aspiring writers?- Just write... forge the rules and write
what comes to you. Then take a break. Read read read read! Read in your
genre. Read outside your genre. Read authors that make you want to write,
that make you feel like you can do it too! Then go back to your manuscript
and finesse it, edit it, polish it, bring out the best in it. Take your
time, do your best work, forget the rules, forget the market... just write!